"Cold Souls" is melancholic, filmed with a rather sad bluish tint, and starring Paul Giamatti, who excels at being cynical and blue. So, it isn't the happiest film in the world. This is the debut of Sophie Barthes, at least her feature length debut, and she takes on a subject as vast and as ambitious as a master would-the concept of the burdening soul. Taking actor Paul Giamatti and have him playing a character named Paul Giamatti, Barthes constructs the story of a man whose soul is getting in the way of his work, and so he decides to have it extracted from his head. When Russian soul traffickers get involved and steal the actors soul, he finds himself borrowing the soul of a Russian poet until he gets it back. Barthes eye is what really strikes me the most, and she has crafted a rather beautiful looking film through its dreary looking tone-often relying on natural outside lighting and always moving it ever so slowly for the viewer to be like an onlooker. And also having a chunk of it taking place in snowy Russia doesn't help, nor does Dickon Hinchcliff's beautiful, somber, and moving minimal score, where samples can be found on his website. And then there's Giamatti himself, one of the best living actors doing what he does best-playing a quiet, discreet, and mildly depressed man. The beautiful subplot involving the Russian poet whose soul he is borrowing really does add an unexpected weight to a film that could have been a light and fluffy Charlie Kaufman-esque film, but Barthes goes beyond that and shows that she is a very talented writer and director in her own right, and I cannot wait to see what she comes up with next.